City police say they will release details about a death quietly added to Edmonton?s 2017 homicide count earlier this month ?when and if? charges are laid.

On Friday, Edmonton police spokeswoman Cheryl Voordenhout said any investigation into the mysterious homicide is still ongoing. Police have been tight-lipped about the death, refusing to reveal the date or location of the homicide, or any identifying information about the victim. Voordenhout added police will ?have more information to communicate? if charges are laid.

City police say they will release details about a death quietly added to Edmonton?s 2017 homicide count earlier this month ?when and if? charges are laid.On Friday, Edmonton police spokeswoman Cheryl Voordenhout said an investigation into the mysterious homicide is still ongoing. Police have been tight-lipped about the death, refusing to reveal the date or location of the homicide, or any identifying information about the victim. Voordenhout added police will ?have more information to communicate? if charges are laid.Edmonton police Chief Rod Knecht said in year-end interviews Dec. 19 that the number of homicides had increased to 41 from 40 ? though that number has since increased again following the Christmas Day homicide of 48-year-old Eddie Eugene Melenka.

After Knecht revealed the death, police communications staff said the investigation was at a ?sensitive stage? and that releasing any information could compromise the investigation. When the homicide total was updated on the EPS website, the number of male victims increased by one.

Including Melenka?s death, there have been 45 Edmonton homicides so far in 2017, though police do not include two officer-involved shooting deaths, nor do they include a death by vehicle where homicide charges were initially laid, but then withdrawn.pparsons@postmedia.comtwitter.com/paigeeparsons

It?s a murder mystery of a most peculiar kind ? the homicide that police just won?t discuss.On Dec. 19, in his annual year-end interviews with the local media, Edmonton police Chief Rod Knecht casually added another, previously unrevealed, homicide to the city?s running tally of culpable death.?I asked this morning, and I said, ?What are we at?? ? Knecht told reporters. ?Because I thought it was 40, actually. And we?re at 41. I had it double-checked. We?re at 41, as of today.?It was an odd statement. Was this a homicide that the chief himself hadn?t known about? Was he supposed to announce the death this way, or was it a slip?

Certainly, Knecht?s off-handed comment was the first time journalists learned about this new death.Unfortunately, that?s all we know.

More than a week later, the media relations office of the Edmonton Police Service still refuses to release any more information about this mysterious case.Police won?t tell us who died. It?s not just the name they?re keeping a secret. We don?t know the person?s age, so we have no way of knowing whether the victim was a baby, a senior, a teenager, a young adult.

Police won?t release the victim?s gender, either. Before the chief?s interview, EPS had told journalists that 32 of this year?s homicide victims were male and eight were female. After the interview, revised numbers on the EPS website showed 33 males had been homicide victims. We might deduce that this new victim was male. Still, police won?t confirm it.The police won?t say when this person died. Maybe it was last week. Or perhaps he ? if it is a he ? died months and months ago, and the death was only recently ruled a homicide. We just don?t know.

How did this person die? Gunshot? Stabbing? Was the victim beaten to death? Strangled? Smothered? Poisoned? Run over by a car?Was the victim killed at home? In a back alley? Outside a bar? In the library with a candlestick? Your guess is as good as mine.

Police insist they need to keep all this basic information completely confidential because the investigation is at a ?very sensitive stage.?Releasing any more data, police told me Wednesday, could compromise the ?integrity of the investigation.? Whatever that means.

It?s a truly unprecedented degree of confidentiality, even for the EPS. The service has become much more secretive in the last 12 months.Before 2017, it was standard practice for the Edmonton police to release the names of homicide victims. This year, there was a striking departure in protocol, with police routinely refusing to release names.

The EPS offered various explanations for this new policy. Sometimes, they said they were refusing to release the names to protect the families of victims. Other times, they blamed Alberta?s privacy legislation, insisting ? creatively, if erroneously ? that provincial law forbade them from naming the dead.

The total secrecy surrounding Homicide No. 41 takes ?privacy? to a surreal level of absurdity. Since then, we?ve had another homicide, No. 42. Police have said this victim was a 48-year-old man who died Christmas morning. But police aren?t releasing his name, either, citing privacy concerns.

But murder isn?t a private act. It is not a crime against one person. It is an assault on the peace of the community. And Edmonton?s extraordinarily high homicide rate is a symptom of a larger social malaise. How can we hope to reduce violent crime, if we can?t keep track of who?s being killed and in what circumstances? How do we hold police accountable, if we don?t know what they?re investigating?

Sure, we may learn some of their names from court records, if charges are laid in their deaths. But if no one is ever arrested, they could remain anonymous forever.

Paula Simons: A very public crime; a very private investigationThe investigation is wide open, the unidentified suspect is a wanted man, and the threat to the public is real. Paula Simons, Edmonton Journal Published on: January 29, 2018 | Last Updated: January 29, 2018 5:30 PM MST

It happened last Wednesday at about 10:30 p.m. Two 28-year-old brothers ? twins ? were standing in a bus shelter on 118 Avenue at 83 Street, near the Catholic Social Services building. According to police, the 28-year-old men had just gotten off one bus and were waiting for a transfer.They were approached by a mugger, who tried to rob them. But the robbery went wrong, and one brother was stabbed. The robber took off, and the twins chased him east along the avenue. But soon, the one brother?s wound made the chase impossible. They called 911. But the injured brother died in hospital.Who was he? I?ve no idea. Police are begging the public to come forward with tips. They are asking witnesses to step up. Yet they won?t identify the man who died.

It?s peculiar, even by EPS standards. Last January, police in Edmonton adopted a new practice of not releasing the names of homicide victims in certain instances. In many of those cases, the dead person was the victim of a domestic homicide ? allegedly killed by a partner or family member. In those cases, police justified their refusal by saying those investigations were effectively closed, a suspect was in custody, and there was no threat to the general public. Now, I don?t happen to agree with that logic. I think domestic homicides need to be treated as seriously and publicly as any other. But I could, at least, grasp the internal coherence of the EPS argument to keep those names private, even if I didn?t accept it.But in this case? The investigation is wide open, the threat to the community seems genuine. This was a very public crime, a stabbing in the middle of a busy street, with a violent suspect out there somewhere.So why this truly remarkable degree of secrecy? Police will only say that releasing the victim?s name will not ?serve an investigative purpose.??At this time, investigators do not believe releasing the name and photograph of the victim will assist with finding witnesses,? police spokeswoman Carolin Maran told me via email Monday. ?The family of the victim has also requested that the name not be released and their privacy be respected.?

Police seek help identifying suspect in random... 2:10Of course, losing a brother would be hard enough. To see your twin stabbed to death in front of you would be a unique kind of hell. And I guess it?s possible police are worried that identifying the dead man would put his twin brother in some kind of danger ? though police told me they have no sense that the surviving twin is at risk.But as terrible, as heart-breaking, as this situation is, it is dangerous and self-defeating to treat a very public murder such as this as a private affair. Protecting the family?s privacy can?t come ahead of the need to protect the community.The public interest and the public good cannot be well-served by this aura of mystery. People who live and work along 118 Avenue have the right to know what?s going on in their neighbourhood. The secrecy, the absence of information, just sets people on edge. In the absence of accurate information, speculation and rumour fill the void.That?s particularly important because this was the second homicide in the area this month. Another 28-year-old, Jarvis Katz, died Jan. 17 after being stabbed at a house near 117 Avenue and 80 Street, just three blocks from this bus stop.Police released his name, demonstrating a bewildering lack of consistency. They?ve asked for tips in that case, too. Why treat two victims so differently? It seems disturbingly arbitrary. No one from the Edmonton Police Commission would take my calls Monday. Veronica Jubinville, who speaks for Alberta Justice, provided this bare statement: ?When it comes to releasing a homicide victim?s identity, individual police services retain the authority to make those operational decisions independently of government and on a case by case basis.?Why has EPS made such a radical change in practice? Why are they so much more secretive than Calgary police? In a city with one of the highest homicide rates in Canada, whose interests are served by keeping the truth about who?s dying in our city in the dark?RelatedPolice investigate suspicious death on 118 Avenue after robbery callHomicide victim tried to chase down his attackerPolice not naming man stabbed to death in random attackPaula Simons: Silent as the Grave: Police refusal to name victims a misreading of FOIPPaula Simons: Homicide secrecy leaves Edmonton in the darkpsimons@postmedia.comtwitter.com/Paulaticswww.facebook.com/EJPaulaSimons

The EPS participated in an Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police (AACP) committee mandated to establish consistent practices regarding the naming of homicide victims, hosted by the Solicitor General?s office. The result of that committee?s work was a framework, endorsed by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta, that allowed all AACP agencies to approach this issue in a consistent manner. This was made available to all media outlets,

and

While it is impossible here to explain all of the considerations that go into deciding whether a homicide victim?s name should be released, I will highlight the most important points. Section 17(4) of the FOIPP Act makes it clear that the disclosure of a homicide victim?s name is presumed to be an unreasonable invasion of their personal privacy.

Therefore, in order to release the name, the circumstances supporting release must outweigh the presumption of privacy. This must be determined on a case-by-case basis, while considering ALL of the relevant circumstances.

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What has changed is the realization that we are now further required by law to only release as much personal information as necessary to solve crimes. Arbitrary publication of the personal information of every homicide victim would go against privacy legislation, potentially put critical investigations and prosecutions at risk, and contravene the wishes of many family members who are suffering through unimaginable loss.

Section 32 of the FOIPP Act requires that a matter must be ?clearly in the public interest? as opposed to a matter that may simply be ?of interest to the public?. Mere public curiosity is not enough to disregard the privacy rights of the victim and their family.